ODC/Dance Presents: Summer Sampler

Founder, Artistic Director

Brenda Way received her early training at the School of American Ballet and Ballet Arts in New York City. She is the founder and artistic director of ODC/Dance and creator of the ODC Theater and ODC Dance Commons, community performance and training venues in San Francisco’s Mission District. She launched ODC and helped create an inter-arts department at Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music in the late 1960's before relocating to the Bay Area in 1976.

Brenda has choreographed more than 85 pieces over the last 45 years. Her commissions include Unintended Consequences: A Meditation (2008) Equal Justice Society; Life is a House (2008) San Francisco Girls Chorus; On a Train Heading South (2005) CSU Monterey Bay; Remnants of Song (2002) Stanford Lively Arts; Scissors Paper Stone (1994) Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; Western Women (1993) Cal Performances, Rutgers University and Jacob's Pillow; Ghosts of an Old Ceremony (1991) Walker Art Center and The Minnesota Orchestra; Krazy Kat (1990) San Francisco Ballet; This Point in Time (1987) Oakland Ballet; Tamina (1986) San Francisco Performances; and Invisible Cities (1985) Stanford Lively Arts and the Robotics Research Laboratory. Her work Investigating Grace was named an NEA American Masterpiece in 2011.

KIMI OKADA (Associate Choreographer, Director of ODC School)is a founding member of ODC. Her work includes more than 26 choreographed works for ODC/Dance, as well as commissions and collaborations with Geoff Hoyle, Bill Irwin, Julie Taymor, and Robin Williams. She has choreographed productions for the American Conservatory Theater of San Francisco, Yale Repertory Theater, the New Victory Theater in New York, the Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis, Theatre for a New Audience in New York, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the American Music Theater Festival, the Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Music Center Opera, Los Angeles Theatre Center, the Pickle Family Circus, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

She was nominated for a Tony Award for the Broadway production of Largely New York, which she co-choreographed with Bill Irwin. She received a 2014 Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Choreography for ODC’s Two If by Sea.

Since 1996, Kimi has served as director of the ODC School, which she has brought to the forefront of international and national dance education for youth and adults. She has been honored with a California State Legislature Assembly Resolution for choreographic and community contributions. She also directs one of ODC’s teen companies, the Dance Jam.

KT NELSON (ODC Fellow) joined ODC/Dance in 1976 and partners with Brenda Way in directing the ODC/Dance Company. KT choreographed and directed the Company’s first full-length family ballet in 1986, The Velveteen Rabbit. The production has become a holiday tradition in the Bay Area engaging generations of dance goers, young and less so.
 
KT has been awarded the Isadora Duncan Dance Award four times: in 1987 for Outstanding Performance, in 1996 and 2012 for Outstanding Choreography, and in 2001 for Sustained Achievement. Her collaborators have included Bobby McFerrin, Geoff Hoyle, Shinichi Iova-Koga, Max Chen, Zap Mama, and Joan Jeanrenaud. In 2008, her work RingRounRozi, in collaboration with French-Canadian composer Linda Bouchard, was selected to be performed at the Tanzmesse International Dance Festival. In 2009 Nelson was one of three artists selected for Austin Ballet’s New American Talent Competition. In 2012 she created new work for Western Michigan University as part of their Great Works Dance Project.
 
In addition to her work as a choreographer, Nelson ran the summer dance department for Center for Creative Youth at Wesleyan University 2003-2006, and founded the ODC Dance Jam in 1997. Over the last 25 years, KT has played a major role in defining and implementing ODC’s on-going and project-based outreach programs. She has mentored the Margaret Jenkins’ Chime Project and continues to mentor emerging artists in the Bay Area and abroad.

Amy Seiwert serves as the Artistic Director of the San Francisco contemporary ballet company, Imagery. She enjoyed a nineteen-year performing career with Smuin, and LA Chamber Ballets. As a dancer with Smuin Contemporary Ballet she was mentored under the wing of the late Michael Smuin and was the company’s Choreographer in Residence from 2008-2018. Named one of “25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine, SF Chronicle called her first full evening of choreography a “Top 10” dance event (2007.) Other awards include an IZZIE Award for Outstanding Choreography and a “Goldie” from the Bay Guardian.  Her ballets have been supported by the NEA, The Rainin Foundation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Joyce Theater in New York City. A former Resident Artist at ODC Theater, her ballets are in the repertory of Ballet Austin, Washington, Atlanta, Oakland, Colorado, Louisville, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Milwaukee, and American Repertory Ballets as well as Robert Moses KIN and AXIS Dance.

Photo by Steve DiBartolomeo